Memories of Ice...good grief!

I've only got to the end of chapter 7 so far, but i'm damned glad i kept with the series now. GOTM was an off-kilter start, but i appreciate the lead time on some of the characters now, while DHG was excellent.

Before I started reading The Malazan series, I thought Martin was the master.
Now I am in doubt, I am two thirds of the way through MOI and am stunned by the sheer brilliance of his writing. Words fail me to describe how encompassing his work is! I admit the first novel was in my humble eyes good, but not as enthralling as I had hoped, but since then I have been dumbfounded by the vast scope of his world. It just gets growing and drags you in more with each novel! Arrgh I cant say anymore, I have to go and read another chapter!!! (after I find an excuse to leave work!).

Epic. Truly epic. I momentarily lost my way once or twice, but I put that down to not reading anything for a few days rather than the book itself.

I really liked the look into Quick Ben, and how he and Kalam came to join Whiskeyjacks company, and how the company came to be known as the Bridgeburners.

The ending (not the epilogue) came as a shock even though I was expecting it. Sad, regardless. But the epilogue got me nearly jumping for joy; Deadhouse Gates is currently my favourite out of the three I've read, and Duiker is by far my favourite character, so you can imagine why I was happy.

Talking about Duiker, the link between the two "campaigns" (Chain of Dogs and that against the Pannion Seer) was cleverly done - with Quick Ben talking to the Trygalle Traders. DHG was my first taste of Malazan a few months back, and the sudden appearance of the Traders threw me (at the time I thought Erikson made them up just as an excuse to get the groups out of trouble). After reading DHG after GotM (re-read, this time in the place it should have been), things started to make more sense, but it wasn't until the scene in MoI that things clicked into place nicely.

I reread it before I recently received my stateside copy of Reaper's Gale.

It really didn't do any favors for my impression of Reaper's, lol.

The defence of Capustan, the rise of Gruntle to Mortal Sword, the whole Itkovan story line, and Quick Ben paying a visit to Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, the founding of the Bridgeburners..........and that only touches on a portion of the book.

Yes! count me in on it too, Memories of Ice is the single most finest piece of stand-alone EPIC fantasy literature I've had the pleasure to read thus far with A Game of Thrones a close second. My brain deadlocks every time I try to pick my favorite between GRRM and Erikson, I guess it would be easier to attempt this sort of thing when these two stories are finally closed.

I'm about 250 pages from the end of this book and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Deadhouse Gates was just...whoa...especially the ending. I don't think I've ever read a more traumatic and just plain horrible ending before (not bad...no, not bad, just horrible).

What I like about Memories of Ice is the playful bits in it. Deadhouse Gates, as I said, was heavy stuff, following the intense journey of the Chain of Dogs. In Memories of Ice, I love the bits between the Bridgeburners, and Stonny and Gruntle's taunting of one another. The amount of times I've laughed out loud at the Bridgeburners antics. Particularly Blend and Picker, with Blend's uncanny ability to just pop up suddenly. And Quick Ben, who was one of my favourite characters from Gardens of the Moon, just keeps on getting better. He's an awesome character.

For a long time I've been wondering who the hell the two characters are on the front of my edition (I have the American Tor Fantasy books). It wasn't until about two thirds of the way through when I finally realising that huge guy, with the bloody slashes, wild hair and two swords, is supposed to be Gruntle, with Stonny standing behind him. Can't say I imagine him to look quite like that...

I'm enjoying the series so much now that I might actually continue with the series immediately after finishing this book; this is something I rarely do...

Finished my re-read of MoI at Uni, and there were a few things I picked up on, which I can only put down to a slower re-read, and knowing more about the world from later books.

One of the main things was a revelation about Otataral - Trake, I think it was, somewhere in the first 200 pages (137 springs to mind), makes an offhand thought about how he helped create the otataral desert. Interesting, I thought.

In HoC (more SPOLIERS ABOUND), it is postulated that the Otataral Desert was created to bind the Jade Giant. I'm going to leave the discussion here, as it'll probably get out of hand and move from MoI subjects. I imagine that Dust of Dreams will have a lot to say about the jade giants, judging from its prologue.